


i know my kingdom awaits

by hes_made_of_gold (how_fickle_my_heart)



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3314564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/how_fickle_my_heart/pseuds/hes_made_of_gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since Hal was home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know my kingdom awaits

"Do you… Do you want to come inside? For coffee."

 

Barry’s voice is low but clear in the dark of night. He is framed (literally) in the doorway, light spilling onto the porch as if to tangle into Hal’s clothes and drag him inside. There are weeds on the front lawn that Hal doesn’t remember. The door has been repainted to green. It’s the same colour as his constructions, if Hal were to think about it. He’s trying not to.

 

“Yeh,” is his halting reply. His voice is rough from misuse and they both almost flinch. Barry hides it better than him and Hal can’t remember if it’s just his character or the superspeed.

 

The house is the same, mostly, same lemon yellow kitchen walls than Hal wants to sink into like butter spread over warm toast. The coffee maker is in its rightful place on the kitchen bar. Same make, too, and Hal swallows down the immense guilt that storms up his throat when he realises that he can’t remember the taste of coffee.

 

Barry turns away to fuss with the cupboards, sugar or some shit. They’re doing a great job of not looking at each other.

 

Hal turns his eyes to the room, the kitchen that opens out onto a living room. The garden can just be made out beyond. There is the sofa he’d slept on, when he would wake up late and rush to work. He'd stayed over for a week, sometime in between the mad rush of his life, and they’d done nothing but blissfully procrastinate. Barry had taught him how to make fancy eggs; Hal had almost poisoned himself on them and spent the rest of the time devoted to take out.

 

The space isn’t much changed. _Why would it be?_ He thinks to himself. _It’s only been four months_. Barry is hardly the type to randomly redecorate.

 

There are library books open on the floor by the sofa. Hal squints, turns his head, tries to peer at a cover. Something about theoretical physics. It’s neighbour is a cookbook, which is being crushed by a heavy tome on architecture.

 

There is also a collection of empty coffee mugs on the sofa. _On_ it, as opposed to the side table next to it. Barry has a bad habit of leaving things in strange places.

 

Something settles inside him as these details filter through, little idiosyncrasies of home weighing down his boots so that he finally feels grounded. In the vastness of space he’d kept The Flash as a beacon of sanity, pinning all his love and homesickness on the figure in red. He’d held Barry in some holy light, making a caricature of hope out of a human. It was wrong, untrue and unfair, and Hal really did resist the urge to canonise his best friend, but when his sanity was competing against the temptation of idolising heroics – well, he picked survival. He could remember either the Flash, in all his immoral glorying comfort, or Barry, who was just a man.

 

It is easier to love an ideal in the cold vacuum of space.

 

“Hal?” Barry asks. Hal blinks for a moment, stares at the man standing on the opposite side of the kitchen island and feels farther from him than he ever had in the reaches of deep space.

 

He accepts the cup Barry pushes into the no mans land between them, pouring an obscene amount of sugar into it, just catching Barry’s incredulous look. A smile arrests his face without his permission. “Missed sugar,’ he explains roughly.

 

Barry ducks his head into to his own coffee. Maybe it’s to hide some twisted expression, maybe to blow steam away from the liquid like mist running over ice. Hal doesn’t know. He's so saturated with alien rituals and customs that his human knowledge seems to have been eroded. Funny what only four months can do. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he offers quietly. The coffee is a rich chocolate lake below him; he doesn’t dare look away.

 

He probably misses the look of venom Hal figures Barry must send his way to accompany the reply. “You should be.” It’s calm and composed, just the way Barry gets when he’s resigned himself to something distasteful. The lack of rage sets Hal’s teeth on edge.

 

“I know. I don’t,” he shakes his head fiercely, hands fists on the table. “I can’t apologise.” 

 

“You could, but it would be worthless.” Okay, chasm in his chest that just erupted outwards. Go on then. Swallow him whole. Barry shifts. Hal spots a glint of golden hair before firmly reglueing his eyes to the counter. His voice is softer when he speaks again. “You could start by looking at me.”

 

 _That isn’t a good idea,_ Hal thinks, and repeats it aloud. Barry says nothing. He looks up, of course he looks up, he’s been fighting it since stepping into this house, more familiar to him than his own apartment.

 

Barry is still blond and handsome. There’s a look in his eyes that asks Hal what the hell he’s doing here and a turn to his mouth that whispers thank god you’re okay. (Hal is probably projecting, it ought to be noted.) His hair is shorter and his forearms are pressed to the countertop. He’s the same height slouched against the island as Hal is sitting on one of the old rickety stools. The muscles in his arms are tensed.

 

Hal never had a chance.

 

He rockets upwards, easily crossing the minimal distance between them. The rest of the considerable momentum goes into slamming his mouth against Barry’s, finesse and grace evaporating all around them. He errantly wonders if lips can bruise black, if he could make Barry’s mouth swell so much that oxygen couldn’t get through and the haemoglobin would stagnate and blue (see, Hal paid attention in school.)

 

Strong hands pull at his new hair, knocking their noses together hard enough that Hal feels the sting in the backs of his eyes. Jesus, that’s Barry’s giant sized hands on his hair and Barry’s nails digging deep into his neck. Neither of them have managed to get their mouths open yet, too consumed by the force they are exerting on each other.

 

It isn’t a kiss. It’s like punching someone in the mouth with your mouth.

 

Barry’s hands fall to the counter edge when it becomes clear that neither will give. The fight in him flees. Hal doesn’t still in confusion. He lets the momentum continue to drop his head onto the cabinet behind them without pause, his own fingers knotting into his hair in some parody of the touch that had just been there.

 

They’re both breathing a little to hard. The sound clogs up the kitchen.

 

“Fuck,” Hal half pants into the wood. He glances sideways through his fringe and fingers to see Barry staring at the ceiling rather intently. His hands are now curled so tightly around the mug Hal ought to be worried about its survival. It crashes into the opposite wall a moment later, so he’s glad that he didn’t form any brief emotional solidarity with it.

 

Barry sits at the counter and drops his face into his hands. “Fuck,” he agrees, and Hal shouldn’t feel some phantom satisfaction at the swear.

 

“Said it was a bad idea,” Hal mumbles. He turns bodily and slumps into a seat next to Barry, lets his head drop again and idly presses his bottom lip to the wood of the kitchen island.

 

“I just wanted you to look at me.”

 

“Liar,” he replies easily. The atmosphere is gaining back its previous tension.

 

“You left.” Barry says it quite suddenly, a hint of superspeed slurring at the accusation.

 

Hal buries himself into his arms further. “Yeh. I know. I was there.” The clock ticks away. The seconds feel like eons to Hal; how Barry must be drowning in the space between his breaths. “I’ve left before.”

 

“Not like this.” Barry’s voice is almost toneless. Isn’t that just the problem? Hal runs away from his own issues by fixing other peoples’.

 

“I wasn’t running,” he tries. _Not this time._ “I’ve got a job that makes it really easy to, and I exploit that a lot. But – not this time. I promise you.”

 

“I got home from work and you were gone,” Barry says. It’s true, it’s all true and Hal has never wanted to deny something so much in his life.   

 

“I didn’t want to.”

 

Barry’s hands peel back from his face and come to rest on the table. His fingers are spread. He’s looking at Hal, right at Hal through Hal’s dark fringe. “How was I supposed to know that? It’s the same M.O. you use for every girl you take to bed.”

 

And what is Hal to say to that? He doesn’t always want to leave them. The girls and Barry – a bit of him always wants to stay for breakfast and laze beside them in the weak sun. It that pull more pronounced for Barry? Is Barry the one who tips the scales? All Hal remembers is blinking awake to the clock reading 11:08 AM and a spike of adrenaline crashing trough him at the message from the ring. There had never been that moment of indecision when he could’ve crawled in next to Barry.

 

“I missed you,” he says instead.

 

“Are we just going to ignore it?” Barry asks. They’re still looking at each other. Hal sighs.

 

“What do you want to do?” He’s trusts Barry more than himself with this stuff.

 

“You leave a lot.”

 

“It’s my job.”

 

Barry takes a sip of his coffee. “I was really angry at you.”

 

“And now?” Hal’s voice is timid.

 

“Its your job,” Barry says humourlessly, mouth pulling up into a parody of a smile. “Leaving is your job.” He shakes his head, shakes off some of that animosity. “Would it kill you to send a message now or then?”

 

There’s a blockade in Hal’s throat that isn’t at all related to the greasy burger he stopped off for before coming to Barry. “I’m sorry.” He could chant it for the whole evening and Barry still won’t really understand just what Hal means by it.

 

“I missed you.” Barry’s eyes are really blue and fixed on him. Hal’s seen the infinite expanse of space, he’s been the only living thing for light years in all directions, and this isn’t quite as intense at that but it scrapes at the loneliness in his chest all the same.

 

“’M glad I’m home,” Hal says quietly. Barry smiles, something brilliant and far too white, and just maybe it’s going to be okay for a while now.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading! I originally posted this on Tumblr and moved it across. Incidentally, my Tumblr is [cherryflamed](http://cherryflamed.tumblr.com)


End file.
